I've been approached by a company called "KEN" offering to supply me with electricity about 25% cheaper than ΔΕΗ. Checked their website and all seems above board. Have any other members of this forum been approached or even switched? Any information would be appreciated.

I'm not sure where the 25 % discount over ΔΕΗ comes from? Looking at the ΚΕΝ web site the fixed charges are virtually identical to ΔΕΗ, the price per kWh during the night is identical to ΔΕΗ, for those who have the cheap night service, and the cost per kWh for daytime use, or 24 hours if you don't have the cheap night service, is about 6 % less than ΔΕΗ. Both ΚΕΝ and ΔΕΗ offer a 15 % discount for prompt payment. As far as I am aware all suppliers have to charge the same for things like distribution, green charges etc.

Yes I never know what to think of stuff like this ...it's the same product! How can someone sell the same stuff, that comes down the same cable ,cheaper than the people who own those cables and generate the stuff ....It's beyond our Ken ....( sorry)

I think the way it works here, and in the UK, is all based around the difference between the wholesale and retail prices of energy. Where the generator is also the retailer, like ΔΕΗ, the generator part of the business sells electricity to the retail part of the business at the wholesale price. The retail part then adds on its overheads and profit margin and comes up with a price to the consumer. A new, smaller business can also buy electricity at the same wholesale price from the generator. If it can find ways of operating at lower overheads, perhaps with better technology and/or lower paid staf, and possibly accepting a smaller profit margin it can sell the electricity to the consumer at a lower price. In some cases the newcomer may also be a generator in their own right, perhaps using alternative energy sources, which, possibly in part due to subsidies, they can also provide energy more cheaply.

That's the theory but it is not the whole story. People have ideas. Ideas are wonderful things. They are free to be discussed, challenged, supported disproved, developed or forgotten. Governments everywhere take ideas and turn them into ideologies. Ideologies are hideous beasts. They develop a life of their own, it is virtually impossible to challenge them or change them in any way. Even Hercules would not be able to slay one. Everything has to be manipulated to fit the ideology. When Adam Smith wrote "On the wealth of nations" it was a wonderful idea. It became known as free market capitalism and it was a theory to try to explain what happens when people trade freely with each other. It was not a perfect theory but it was a brilliant first insight into how people behave economically. As an explanation it works quite well where there is a market based on capital and it is free, as you might expect. As an ideology it is used by governments to control the way markets work to fit their own idea of what the theory means. An artificial market, like that for energy, is the result. In physical reality the market for energy is somewhere between a natural monopoly, i.e. a single cable entering your house connected to a single national grid, and an oligopoly, i.e. a very limited number of generators feeding energy into that grid. It is not a free market and you can't make it into one, only pretend.

Though some form of competition to ΔΕΗ should be welcomed. By forcing utility monopolies to supply a 'Wholesale Product' then competition can enter a market that would otherwise be closed due to the cost of establishing, and inefficiency, of creating another electrical network. Alternatively you can enforce strict price regulation on the monopoly - but government regulation will vary in its aims depending on the ideology of the ruling government so creating uncertainty and difficulty in long term investments.

Anyway - given ΔΕΗ's record, some competition might help, artificially created or not. Though a Greek OFELECTRICTY or whatever would be wondrous thing to see